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You Might Be Surprised What $100 Can Do For The Martha’s Vineyard Boys & Girls Club

The Martha’s Vineyard Teddy Bear Suite’s bears may be en route to their big bear cave, but the spirit of the event and fundraising lives on. With your help, we have met our initial $20,000 goal. Now at $21,900, we are keeping the fundraising going.

We are hoping to raise $25,000. This will fund half of the $50,000 of the Martha’s Vineyard Boys & Girls Club’s Healthy Happy Kids (H2K), which provides hundreds of Island children each week in their after school program to have access to FREE, healthy, sizable snacks and meals.

With H2K, the Club has seen a dramatic decline in bad behavior, an increase use of homework club, other clubs, physical activities and more. Offering all the kids in the Club the chance to have full bellies has been a real game changer, and we are passionate about this program.

Food is such a basic need that so many of us take for granted, but these kids don’t. Eating at the Club has become an important part of some many little ones daily food sources. Without it, they might go hungry.

Think about it. Many kids have breakfast and lunch at their school which is subsidized, and if they’re like my kids, they barely eat lunch because there is such a short time allotted to eat. Often, my kids come home with full lunch boxes, and they then literally inhale the “leftovers.” What about those kids who don’t have that option?

Would their next meal be at 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., depending on their parents/guardians’ schedule? They would be so hungry, causing all sorts of potential concern, poor behavior, poor physical development, it is painful to even think of our kids going hungry.

H2K bridges that big gap, and every dollar donated to the #mvteddybearsuite goes directly to this program. Let us show you just how much of an impact you can have. Donate now.

Executive directer of the Club, Jessie Damroth (a darn good photographer too), shared a super fun after school snack with us. A group of women with ties to the Club, from the Brazilian community, donated enough fruit for the kids to have their own fruit kabob party.

Who knew that giving kids a bunch of healthy, colorful fruit, and some skewers could bring such joy? She was able to capture some of the fun. Seeing these pictures makes your heart smile. Kids being kids — healthy and happy. As adults, as community members, we should always do what we can to make this happen.